VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — It’s a new year, which means a new mission to improve safety for all road users is kicking off in Virginia Beach.   The city has developed a Road Safety Action Plan with a goal to reduce fatal and serious crashes in half by 2055. After that, they eventually want to get that number to zero.   “Back in 2023, we noticed that traffic fatalities were increasing despite total crashes decreasing,” said Virginia Beach Engineering Support Manager Katie Shannon.   The plan originated with that trend, as well as competitive grant opportunities for the city that require a local road safety action plan. “We would not consider any of the streets in Virginia Beach to be unsafe," Shannon said. "This is more just to improve for all road users, it's not just the vehicles on the road, it's also the pedestrians. It's the cyclists,” Shannon said.   For over a year, she explained that a task force used public involvement to get recommendations through meetings and a website.   "We took all of that information and we combined it with just the best engineering information out there as well," Shannon said, "and we created kind of our top issues that we were seeing, and we came up with a group of countermeasures that we wanted to pursue in the coming years to hopefully increase safety and reduce fatalities." The measures include enforcement and infrastructure improvements. The document also identified six high ranking road segments and five signalized intersections they would prioritize in the future.   "Our plan is to try to pair those with other grant opportunities that are out there," Shannon said, "whether it's through the state or the federal government, and really try to pair the project specific problems with the grant opportunity to try to bring in as much state and federal government, state and federal funding as we can and leverage our local funds." However, for a short-term goal, Shannon explained they are planning to start off 2025 with education for all road users.   "We want to get out there," Shannon said. "We want to pair with our communications department. We want to do some public service announcements. We want to do some pamphlets, get some Facebook and Instagram and social media posts out there. Education is kind of the foundation, and that's not just for the drivers. It's for the pedestrians who have the right of way. We're looking at our youth and inexperienced drivers. We're also looking at our adult and aging road users as well, and just trying to get everyone better informed in 2025 and beyond.”  Local-Road-Safety-Action-PlanDownload